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Running in the concrete jungle of life

October 22, 2010 By

I suffer from the age-old, clichéd, and frankly boring problem of being a woman with not enough hours in the day. I find myself going to bed ridiculously late and not getting enough sleep, and from time to time I wonder why this is. Am I really that busy or do my time management skills just suck? In analyzing this question, I decided to draw up a rough schedule of what happens in a typical day.

6:00 – 7:15    Wake up, get myself dressed and ready, get James dressed and ready.
7:15 – 7:30    Take James to daycare
7:30 – 8:45    Commute to work
8:45 – 4:45    Earn my keep
4:45 – 6:15    Commute home
6:15 – 7:30    Cook dinner, eat dinner, get kids to eat their dinner
7:30 – 8:00    Supervise George’s homework, read library books with both boys
8:00 – 9:00    Get kids bathed and into bed. Throw load of laundry into washing machine. Make sure car is locked. Make tea.
9:00 – 9:30    Get clothes ready for myself and kids for the following day. Make George’s lunch. Ensure kids’ backpacks contain homework, library books to be returned, forms to be returned to teachers, etc.
9:30 – 10:00    Clean up kitchen. Unload and load dishwasher. Turn dishwasher on and wash any dishes that don’t fit in dishwasher. Get coffee machine ready for the following morning.

What this means is that in the evenings, it’s around ten before I can even sit down at my computer and read emails. This is why I have given up on all of the Facebook games that end in “ville”. I just never have enough time to check on my farm, or my kitchen, or my pet. FarmVille – crops keep dying. FrontierVille – weeds keep growing. PetVille – pet keeps running away to the pound. You get the picture. So now, my Facebook games are the ones that I can spend five minutes or less on, where I won’t suffer penalties if I neglect them for five days.

Do you notice anything missing in the schedule above? Running. Where am I supposed to find time to run? If my daily timetable is anything to go by, my only options are (a) go running in time to be back by six in the morning, or (b) go running after ten at night. Option (b) isn’t really an option to me, because I would be worried about safety.  Something tells me that a woman running alone at that time of night would not be the smartest idea. So I’ve been going with option (a), getting up at 5:00 a.m., being out on the road by 5:15, and trotting back into my driveway by around 6:10 or so.

Except lately, this hasn’t been working out too well. George has been having issues sleeping – a phenomenon very common to children with autism. On any given night, there is roughly a fifty/fifty chance of him – and thereby me – actually getting a full night’s sleep. On the nights he wakes up, he crawls into bed next to me and plays with my hair. No matter how many times I gently move his hands away from my head, they always find their way back there, and he wraps it around his fingers, scrunches it up in his hands, sniffs it, strokes it, on and on and on until he drifts back to sleep. On the good nights, this lasts for half an hour or so. On the bad nights, it will go on for two or three hours.

It doesn’t matter how dedicated a runner you are. If you have a small child keeping you awake from 2:30 until 4:30, it is going to be near-impossible for you get up at 5:00, go running, and then put in a full day of work. It’s not even as if George’s nocturnal adventures are an occasional thing.  For the last month or so, it has been happening two or three nights a week.

It is hammering me, and I am increasingly stressed out by my inability to find time to run. Not running is not an option. Running late at night when I feel vulnerable is not an option. Running first thing in the morning when I’ve had no sleep is not an option.  So I have to get creative.

To solve the problem, I started by considering each run individually. I run five days a week, with Mondays and Fridays off. The weekend runs are not a problem: even if I have to get up early for those, I have the option of vegetating in front of the TV for the rest of the day (true, I’d have two kids jumping on me, but still). That takes care of four days of the week right there. On Wednesdays I go running with a group after work (kills my Wednesday evening schedule but I can live with that once a week), and I’ve worked out that I could do my Tuesday runs on a treadmill at the gym at lunchtime.

All of a sudden, the problem is a lot more manageable. Now, all I have to worry about are the Thursday runs. I’m still not too sure what I will do about those, but I’ll figure something out, either by just living with the early-mornings-after-no-sleep once a week or by doing some kind of creative reorganization to my schedule.

It just goes to show: when the running bug bites you, somehow you find a way to fit it all in.

Filed Under: life, running Tagged With: , , , , , ,
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I never could get the hang of Thursdays

October 21, 2010 By

I’m having one of those days. You know, the kind where you realize, by ten in the morning, that if you make it to dinnertime without breaking a leg and accidentally causing a twelve-car pileup on the highway, it will be nothing short of a miracle. Just one of those days where a lot of irritating little things pile up to create one big jumble of irritation.

I overslept this morning.  By more than an hour. I woke up about ten minutes after I should have been walking out of the house. I should have seen it coming, really. I haven’t slept well for about two weeks, and last night my head was literally buzzing with exhaustion. My body was bound to crash and burn sooner or later.

It was the sound of James crying that woke me up. He had woken up thirsty and no-one had given him his morning milk. Of course they hadn’t.  The customary milk-getter was slumbering away, oblivious to everything, while the customary milk-gettee waited patiently – and in vain. When the sound of the crying pierced my somewhat sluggish consciousness, I glanced at the clock, had about thirty-seven panicky thoughts in three milliseconds (all variations of the same theme, which was: “Oh, crap!”), and flew out of bed.

I got James his milk and warned him that things were about to get really chaotic. Into the bathroom, hair brushed into a big-haired, frizzy mess (no time for the hair-straightener), makeup perfunctorily applied, back into the bedroom, clothes thrown on, brief pause in frenzied activity for the purpose of breathing. Somewhere during all of this I tossed James’ clothes at him and hurriedly pleaded with him to put them on. James, who is used to me being a bit slow and dim-witted first thing in the morning, was stunned into compliance.

As I walked by my desk, I saw a note from James’ teacher with a list of what was needed for today’s field trip to a farm. Quickly, I scanned the list to make sure I had taken care of everything. Yes, I had dug out a pair of rubber boots for James to wear while trudging through the pumpkin patch.  Yes, I had put mitts and a scarf in his bag in case it got cold. Yes, I had supplied a plastic bag for the pumpkin that James would pick out. No, I had not made him a packed lunch.

I never make packed lunches for James. There is a snack program at his school, and he gets lunch and afternoon snack at the daycare. The one day that I actually have to make him a packed lunch (and of course, forget), just has to be the one day on which I oversleep.  Go figure. So I grabbed bread, margarine, and slices of cheese, and somehow managed to arrange all of this into a sandwich without lopping off a finger. Goldfish crackers. A couple of juice boxes.

OK. Packed lunch was made. I was dressed. James was dressed. My travel mug was filled with fresh, hot coffee and ready to go.

Somehow I made it out of the front door with James in tow, fifteen minutes after waking up. If I forgot anything, I don’t know about it yet. I got James to the daycare in time for his breakfast. The transit gods were with me: an express bus pulled up to the bus stop about thirty seconds after I got there. I got to work just twenty minutes or so later than usual.  So, not bad, considering how my morning started.

I returned a couple of phone calls and answered some emails. I reviewed my list of things to do today, and checked my calendar. Only one meeting today. Good. Then I went downstairs to get a cup of coffee and a breakfast sandwich. The same guy who’s always there took my order.  A breakfast sandwich with bacon and a splash of ketchup, on an English muffin. I get breakfast sandwiches once or twice a week, always ordering the same thing from the same person. He could probably recite my order in his sleep. It’s nice. There’s comfort in predictability.

With coffee and sandwich in my hand, I returned to my desk and called Gerard, my husband-to-be. I wanted to know if the lady from our wedding venue had called him back. She had promised to call us this morning to tell us which of two dates we could have the hall for. I have been waiting for this day, waiting for the answer. It all hinges on one guy who had made a tentative booking on our preferred date, to use the hall for a darts tournament. As it turned out, the lady from the hall did call Gerard, but she didn’t have an answer for us. The darts tournament man is not reachable because he’s gone hunting.

Hunting? What is this, The Clan Of the Cave Bear?

Apparently, we’ll get an answer by the weekend. I don’t want to wait until the weekend.  I want to know now. But there’s nothing I can do about it, so I’ll have to wallow in my frustration for two or three more days.

With the phonecall to Gerard done, I unwrapped my breakfast sandwich, looking forward to the comfort and risk-averse nature of eating something that I’ve eaten dozens of times before. And I was bitterly disappointed.

Sandwich Guy messed up. First, there was the state of the muffin, which can only be described one way: burned. The outer edges of the muffin had actually burned to a crisp. The rest of it was just one step away from being charred. I could also tell right away that the ketchup had been left off. There was no tell-tale smudge of ketchup peeking out from the edge. Worst of all, though, is that instead of bacon, my breakfast sandwich had been made with ham. So much for the comfort of familiarity.

I was faced with a dilemma. Do I eat a sandwich I don’t want and am pretty sure I won’t like? Or do I schlepp downstairs to complain and get a new sandwich made?  After thinking about it for a minute, I reasoned that maybe Sandwich Guy was having a bad day too. Maybe he too had overslept, forgotten until the last second that his kid needed a packed lunch, been late for work, and discovered that the provider of much-anticipated information was off hunting like Indiana-Freaking-Jones.  I also recognized that if I actually did go back downstairs, I’d probably be meaner to Sandwich Guy than the situation called for, and I might make him cry. Not to be judgmental, but he does look like a bit of a cry-baby – um, sensitive person.

So I sat at my desk and half-heartedly ate my burned, ketchup-free, wrong-meat sandwich. I did not enjoy it. The coffee, however, was outstanding.

As I reached under my desk to throw the sandwich wrapper and empty coffee cup into my waste basket, I pulled a back muscle.

I’m starting to think that me and this day just aren’t going to get along.

Filed Under: life Tagged With: , , , ,
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Fishing for runners

October 18, 2010 By

A decade ago, when I was training for my first-ever race (a 5K, if memory serves), my Dad taught me how to fish for runners. You start at an easy pace, he said, and you don’t allow yourself to be deterred by the hordes of people passing you. When you pass the halfway mark, you pick a target: a runner far ahead of you who you can set your sights on. You gradually reel in the runner and eventually pass them. And then you pick a new victim to fish for, and you keep doing this until you have about five hundred meters to go, at which point you just go hell-for-leather until you cross the finish line.

In his prime, my Dad was one of the top marathoners – and for a time, ultramarathoners – in South Africa. I had a great deal of respect for the running advice he gave me. I used the technique of fishing for runners in my first half-marathon, back in 2001, and it worked like a charm.

Dad was my unofficial coach. Even though he lived on the other side of the world, he was always giving me snippets of advice that ranged from, “Shorten your stride and keep a straight posture going up hills” to, “Bring your own toilet paper to races because the portajohns tend to run out”. He taught me that hydrating in short, frequent bursts is better than gulping down sixteen ounces of water every five kilometres. He took one look at me after the one race he saw me in (a 10K in North York) – he saw the fine layer of salt covering my skin and turning my clothes white – and told me to ditch Gatorade and get a better electrolyte source. He taught me how to shop for running shoes, and explained why good socks are almost as vital as good shoes.

By the time I returned to running after a seven-year gap, Dad was no longer with us.  When I was out on my Sunday long runs, and when I was running my first half-marathon in eight years in considerably less than stellar shape, I had to rely on memories of what Dad had told me. I missed him bitterly on the day of my first Run for Autism, just over a year ago. I did not get to call him for a pre-race pep talk. I was not able to imagine talking to him on the phone later, going through a post-mortem of the race. I was so anxious about simply finishing the race that I found following any kind of a strategy difficult.  I knew, however, that he would be immensely proud of me, and that was enough.

Throughout this running season that is just drawing to a close, I have felt Dad’s presence from time to time. I have remembered more and more of what he told me, and I have read through his old training logs for tips and ideas, and for general inspiration. And then, on Saturday, something weird happened.

I was registered for a 10K run at the zoo.  Initially, I wasn’t even sure if I would be able to run it: it was just three weeks after a half-marathon that left me walking funny for days. I had not really gotten back into proper training since the half-marathon, and I figured that this would be a problem because there are a lot of hills at the zoo. So I went in with absolutely no expectations of myself.  My plan was to just finish the run and enjoy myself.

About two kilometres into the run, I found myself getting frustrated by slower runners ahead of me.  The road was just too narrow for me to pass them; I was waiting for an opportunity to slip by them and surge ahead. All of a sudden I heard Dad’s voice in my head: “What’s the rush?”

“It’s a race,” I pointed out (in my head, of course.  I haven’t quite reached the point of conversing with my deceased father out loud).

“Sure, it’s a race,” said the voice of Dad’s wisdom, “but you have 8K to go. You’ll get your chance a couple of kilometres from now, when the runners are more spread out.”

“But I feel good,” I argued. “I want to go faster.”

“Trust me. You’ll thank me for this later.”

I briefly debated whether to listen to my own actual voice, or the imagined voice of a man who passed away almost six years ago. Imagined voice, I decided.  If there is an afterlife, and if Dad is making the effort to coach me during a race from the Beyond, the least I can do is listen and give it a try.

I approached the first hill of the run, and thought, “Uh oh.”  From way back in the past, Dad’s hill mantra came back to me. “Shorten your stride. Keep your spine straight. Focus your vision on the crest of the hill.” Because I followed the mantra, and because I hadn’t burned off all my energy five hundred metres previously by barrelling past the slower runners, I made it to the top of the hill without even slowing my pace. As it turned out, I passed a number of runners going up the hill.  “Thanks Dad,” I said mentally. “Told you so,” he replied.

Before I knew it, I was running over the timing mats at the halfway point. I was feeling good and enjoying the scenery. Suddenly, Dad was back, as if he’d just popped off to see the lions. “Speed up,” he said. “Where do you think you are, a picnic?”

“Cripes, Dad, you were just telling me there was no rush,” I grumbled.

“That was then,” he said, cryptically. “It’s time to fish.”

I looked up and scanned the runners ahead of me. “The one with ears,” said Dad.  This would have startled me if I hadn’t seen, just in my range of vision, a runner wearing a pair of rabbit ears on his head (one thing about a run at the zoo is that people get creative about what they’re wearing).

Rabbit Ears turned out to be the perfect point of focus for me. By now, the runners were spread out enough for me to pass without impediment. I picked up the pace and bit by bit, I closed in on Rabbit Ears. When he slowed for a drink at the water station, I zoomed on past (another bit of advice from Dad: always take your own water to a race to reduce the number of times you have to slow down at an aid station).

My next victim was a woman wearing a bright red shirt boasting the words, “Toenails are for sissies”.  Once I got past her, I set my sights on a man with some kind of turban on his head, followed by a man wearing a pair of butterfly wings. Throughout all of this, my legs were feeling strong, I was enjoying every step of the run, and I was running up and down the hills with not a care in the world. With five hundred metres to go, Dad had one last piece of advice: “Pretend they’ve let the lions out after you.”

I pretended the lions were after me, and sprinted to the end.  I crossed the finish line feeling strong. I missed my personal best time for the distance by about a minute, and I was OK with that. My personal best was set on an all-downhill course; I performed a lot better here at the zoo and felt stronger at the end.  From the perspective of pacing, race strategy, and running mechanics, this was my best race since my return to running.

Thanks, Dad!

Filed Under: running Tagged With: , , ,
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Lost: the sequel

October 14, 2010 By

Two days ago, my vulnerable seven-year-old son who has autism was taken to the wrong school by the bus driver.  Through the miracle of technology, the principal of the wrong school (hereinafter referred to as School A) was able to determine that George was a student of the right school (hereinafter referred to as School B).  School A principal drove George to School B, where he was welcomed with open arms by his teacher.  School B administrator called Gerard to tell him what had happened.  Gerard called me.  Together, we spent a sleepless night thinking of how very badly this situation could have ended.  we had visions running through our minds of kidnapping, assault, and all other kinds of God-awful things.

The following day, we set out to find answers.  Clearly, we needed to know how and why a situation had arisen that could have had potential to severely compromise the safety of our child.

Gerard went to see the principal of School A. He pointed out that since George wears a special seatbelt lock to prevent unsupervised wanderings up and down the aisle, he could not have simply got up and got off the bus.  Who had taken George off the bus and why? The principal explained that although his school did have a new student, that student was not expected until later in the afternoon due to a medical appointment. When the bus had shown up, everyone had been surprised. A teacher had gone out to meet the bus, and the bus driver had told the teacher that George was transferring to School A.  The driver gestured at George and mentioned him by name.  The teacher had no reason to not believe the bus driver – she simply assumed that someone had not passed on some piece of information to someone else.  This is, after all, an administration.  These things happen.

Gerard’s next stop was the therapy centre.  He deliberately timed his arrival to coincide with that of the bus driver, with the intention of getting the bus driver’s side of the story. The bus driver claims that her supervisor had called her late on Friday to tell her that George was being transferred to School A effective from Tuesday (Monday being a stat holiday).  The bus driver, who knows George very well, was surprised enough to verbally confirm, in the same conversation, that George was the child being transferred. In accordance with these instructions, the bus driver drove George to School A on Tuesday, and only discovered the next day that this had been a mistake.

The supervisor is now claiming that she never named George as the child being transferred, that she had named some other child with a completely different-sounding name. The supervisor is removing the bus driver from George’s route, and is quite possibly going to attempt to fire her.

It sounds to me as if this is what happened: The supervisor gave the bus driver the wrong name.  Instead of saying Peter or Simon or whatever the other kid’s name was, she said George. The bus driver followed through on the instruction she was given, not knowing it was incorrect. Thereby unknowingly placing a child with autism in a very vulnerable situation. Now the supervisor is trying to cover up her mistake by blaming the bus driver, and the bus driver could end up without a job because of the supervisor’s mistake.

Is it just me, or is this story disturbing on many, many levels?

Filed Under: Children, School Tagged With: , , , ,
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Mister Fidget

October 12, 2010 By

George has been getting into everything lately.  And I mean everything.  He opens and closes doors, peers into the refrigerator, moves the lever on the dishwasher door back and forth, and sends the blender into a fruitless frenzy of activity. He gets into cupboards and removes things.  He finds stuff that can be poured, and he pours it.  He turns taps on and off. He has succeeded in deprogramming the remote several times. He finds things in squirt bottles and squirts them. He jabs the straw into those little cardboard juice boxes, and then gives an almighty squeeze to see the juice shooting up and hitting the ceiling. The light on the fish tank gets turned on and off so often that the poor fish have probably completely lost any circadian rhythm they had to begin with.

As much as George loves to fidget with things, turn things on and off, open and close things, pour things, he hates it when anyone else does anything. My attempts to cook dinner, for instance, are accompanied by this contant commentary.  Close the fridge. Microwave off. Close the dishwasher. Close the drawer. Close the cupboard. Leave the milk. Tap off. And on and on and on.  While all of this is going on, I’m tripping over a lanky seven-year-old who is darting around the kitchen trying to put things away, close things, and turn things off.

Running the kids’ bath last night was an adventure. James picked out two boats that he wanted to play with in the bath.  He put them in the tub, I started the water running.  I did what I usually do, which is to close the bathroom door and then go off to gather towels and pajamas while the water is running. When I went back into the bathroom a couple of minutes later, the water had been turned off, the tub was empty, and James’ boats were nowhere in sight. James, it must be said, was not at all pleased.

After a brief search, the boats were located in a toy box, and we tried again. This time, James stood guard at the closed bathroom door, like a miniature sentry. Gerard worked hard to distract George, who was repeatedly going, “Tap off! Tap off!” After what felt like seventeen hours but was in reality a couple of minutes, the bathtub was ready, and I turned the tap off.  George was instantly calm.

James was happy. He climbed into the tub and started playing happily with his boats, among the bubbles in the water.  George had kicked up such a fuss that I was not really expecting him to get in. But he ran off to get a few pieces of Lego, which he tossed into the water.  Then he calmly got in, sat down in the water, and played with his Lego.

When compared with a lot of the other stuff I have to deal with on a day-to-day basis, this behaviour is really not that bad. It’s just inconvenient and exhausting to deal with all the time.  There is, however, a giant silver lining to it: when George is engaging in this behaviour, he is a lot more verbal than usual. We are trying to look past the messes and spills, the fact that we have to keep replacing groceries that get poured out, and the general inconvenience of it all, to see the potential opportunities offered by the increased use of words.

Sometimes troublesome behaviour is a predecessor to a giant leap of progress. Even while I complain about the fact that it takes me twice as long as it should to get anything done, I recognize that this could mean exciting times for ourselves, and more importantly, for George.

Filed Under: parenting Tagged With: , , , , ,
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2010 Run for Autism 2:22:38

September 27, 2010 By

Last week I actually thought I was going crazy. I was leading up the Big Race, which meant that I was running 60% of my usual mileage.  Which in turn meant that I had this build-up of energy that I could not expend in the way I usually do, which is to lace up my running shoes and hit the road. As a result of all this, I was hovering around at home, engaging in these weird frenetic bursts of activity, filling up everyone’s Facebook walls with meaningless status updates, and generally being a bit of a nuisance. Thanks to over a week of very little sleep, I advanced about eight levels in Frontierville.

I started experiencing odd little aches and twinges – tightness in the glutes, a rickety left ankle, what felt like an impending cold – all carefully designed to mess with my mind and convince me that I was not ready for this race.  When I looked back at six months of training, I didn’t see all of the long runs I had clocked up, the hill training or speed reps. I saw the gaps – the long run I missed six weeks ago because of a cold, the two speed training sessions that I was forced to do on a treadmill because of my schedule, the midweek run that I had to cut short because of a thunderstorm.

I was, in other words, experiencing the phenomenon known to runners as taper madness. Some runners are able to completely chill out and relax during their tapering.  Others tend to bounce around inside their own heads as if they’re trapped in a pinball machine on steroids.  Guess which category I fall into.

On Saturday night I went around the house, setting every audible alarm I could think of.  The alarm clock beside the bed. The alarm clock in the living room. The timer on the oven. My BlackBerry. I was so paranoid about oversleeping on the day of the race (never mind that I had been too wired to sleep for a week), and I figured that out of all these alarms, I was bound to hear at least one of them. Of course, all that meant was that on Sunday morning, I woke up at 4:30 and had to creep around the house turning off all the alarms to avoid waking up the kids.

As it happened, my wonderful husband-to-be got me to the starting area without incident, with plenty of time to spare. I checked my bag – a remarkably efficient process, considering I was in a bag-check lineup of maybe 2000 people, and I was in and out of there in less than ten minutes. Then I made my way to a prearranged meeting spot for the Geneva Centre for Autism team photo.

As I lined up at the start line, I could feel those tight glutes, that rickety left ankle, the sense that I was getting a cold and therefore not in the best physical shape. But then magic happened. The starting siren went off and as the crowd surged forward, my glutes instantly loosened up, my ankle found stability, and I was breathing strong and clear. As I crossed the start line, I winged a prayer to whatever supreme being you happen to believe in, put a picture of my son George in my head, and went on my way.

I had a series of mini-goals to accomplish for the race. I knew that the Geneva Centre representative would be at around the 6km mark along with the photographer, so my first goal was to simply get to that point. Once I passed them, I would be almost a third of the way there! As I had thought would happen, I got a great boost of energy from seeing people I knew who were cheering my name, taking my picture, and waving a banner for the cause closest to my heart.

That energy boost was enough to get me to my next mini-goal: the 10km point.  I felt a sense of exhiliration as I ran over the timing mats, and shortly after that, I reached the turnaround point.  Now I was not only more than halfway, I was physically heading back towards the point from which I had started. I was getting tired and pushing myself harder than I had in my training runs, but by breaking down the large distance into smaller goals, I was able to keep going.

With 8km to go, I started running in 2km increments. I reasoned that no matter how rough I started feeling, I would surely be able to manage 2km. As long as I focused on nothing else – not the full distance of the race, not the distance I had run or the total distance that was still to come – if I focused only on the 2km segment of the moment, I would be fine. I told myself that if things started to get really bad, the only thing I had to do was get to the end of those 2km, and then I would figure out what to do next.

And sure enough, before I knew it, I found myself with 2km to go.  I was feeling completely exhausted at that point, feeling as if I had little or nothing left to give. I took one last one-minute walking break, took a deep breath, a braced myself for the finish. With 1km to go, I turned onto Bay Street, and then I knew I would be OK. I knew that the crowds of cheering spectators lining both sides of the street would carry me for the last several hundred metres. The crowds got louder as I got closer to the finish, and despite feeling utterly devoid of energy, I found myself passing other runners leading up to the finish.

I rounded the last bend, and the finish line was in my sights. Right on the other side of the finish line, I could see a welcome and familiar figure – my man, having talked himself into getting a media pass, was crouching there with his video camera. I dug deep, and somehow found a reserve of energy that enabled me to sprint for the last 100 metres. Two hours, twenty-two minutes, and thirty-eight seconds after starting the race, I crossed the finish line, waving both arms triumphantly in the air and smiling so much I thought my face was going to split in two.

Six months of dedicated training, almost $500 raised for the Geneva Centre for Autism (which was part of a total of over $35,000 raised collectively by the Geneva Centre runners), a personal best time for the distance that beat last year’s time by six minutes.  What a day. What a phenomenal event to be a part of.

Am I hurting today? You bet. Will I do it again next year? I’ve already started to plan the training!  My Run for Autism is over, but only for this year.

With Holly Bannerman from the Geneva Centre for Autism

With John Stanton, founder of The Running Room

Filed Under: autism, running Tagged With: , , , , ,
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Running lets me be… and other reasons for running

September 21, 2010 By

One of my co-workers recently asked me why I run, just what it is about the sport that I find so appealing.  There’s a part of me that understands where this question was coming from.  Back in my twenties, when I was smoking thirty a day, not caring what I ate, and generally leading an unhealthy, sedentery lifestyle, I would have been hard-pressed to get why anyone would voluntarily spend their Sunday morning running twenty or thirty kilometres.

When my co-worker asked the question, my response was, “Running allows me to just be.”  This is probably not a very satisfactory reply to be on the receiving end of, but it was the best I could come with at the time.  It’s an interesting question though, one that I will try to answer now.

Here, ladies and gentlemen, are the top ten reasons why running is the sport for me.

1. I’m crap at tennis.  And baseball, and soccer, and pretty much everything else that requires hand-eye coordination.  I have to do something (trust me, I do – I have the kind of metabolism that works just fine when I exercise, but grinds to a screeching halt when I don’t), and the simple action of repeatedly putting one foot in front of the other is something that even I cannot screw up.

2. I’m very competitive with myself.  This is another reason I should never play tennis.  If I miss a shot or send the ball into the net, I get really mad – not at my oppononent for being better than me, but at myself for making a mistake.  Running allows me to channel my inner competitor by targeting personal best times.

3. You can run anywhere.  If you’re, say, a golfer, and you find yourself in a place with no accessible golf course, you’re pretty much S.O.L.  You can’t exactly take your golf clubs down to the nearest main road and start hitting the ball into traffic.  Well, you could, I suppose, but there would be a lot of broken windows and people thinking you were completely off your head.  As a runner, on the other hand, I can take my sport wherever I am.

4. You don’t need a lot of stuff. Tennis players and golfers have to lug around lots of bulky stuff.  And don’t get me started on hockey players – have you seen those bags they use to put all their kit ‘n’ kaboodle in?  You could stuff a dead body into those things and no-one would be any the wiser.  I could technically go to a race without even having to take a bag with me.  Shoes are on my feet, hat is on my head, fuel belt stocked with water, energy drink and gels is around my waist, race number is pinned to my shirt.  When I do take a bag, all it contains is a bottle or two of water and a sweatshirt to put on after the race.

5. You don’t have to join a team to participate in events.  With very few exceptions (such as the Boston Marathon, which you have to qualify for), I can sign up for pretty much anything I want. No-one cares how fast or how slow I am, and the only person who gives a damn what my finishing time is is me.

6. Runners have a great sense of fellowship with one another.  When I’m out on my long runs on Sundays, I always encounter several other runners.  I don’t know any of them from Adam (actually, I do – I have a friend named Adam, but you know what I mean), but we exchange waves, smiles, thumbs-up of encouragement. You feel a kind of kinship with those other souls out there who are pounding the pavement.  From time to time, I even receive shouts of encouragement from other runners who are not actually running at the time.  I know they are runners, because they say things like, “Great leg turnover!” or “Keep going and you’ll get that PB!”

7. You can get all kinds of cool stuff at running stores. Seriously.  You don’t just get shorts and shoes in running stores, you get all kinds of things. Fancy shoelace thingies, race number holders, fuel belts, gel bottles, reflective gadgets.  Watches, heart rate monitors, pedometers, things that hold your music player so you don’t have to.  Sunglasses. Recipe books. Hats – who knew there were so many different kinds of hats?  And that’s before you even get to the section of running clothes.

8. I get to use my Garmin.  This is kind of related to the previous point, but deserves a point all of its own.  I love my Garmin.  It’s a training watch that does everything but slice, dice and make the coffee. The built-in GPS tracks distance as I’m going, so I can make adjustments to my route on the fly. The “virtual partner” tells me at a glance whether I’m running on target, or whether I need to slow down or pick up the pace.  The heart rate monitor is a barometer of whether I am in good shape.  And when my run is done, the watch starts sending data to my computer as soon as I’m within range.  By the time I sit down, there’s a new window open on my computer that has all of the run data, including my times for each kilometre, and a nifty little map of where I’ve run.

9. The feeling I get at the end of a race or a long run is phenomenal. Part of it is the sense of accomplishment at having finished the run, part of it is the “runners high” that gives you a general sense of wellbeing and happiness. When I’m nearing the end of a run and eeling really rough, I motivate myself my reminding myself how great I will feel fifteen or twenty minutes from now.

10. Running allows me to see a thought through to its completion.  I am a mom.  I a mom of two young boys, both at demanding stages of their development.  When I am at home, any thought I start to have in invariably interrupted by something that sounds like this: “AAAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHHH!!!  Mommy!  George won’t let me play with the Lego!” followed by an assortment of thumps and bumps and slamming doors.  When I’m running, I can actually formulate plans, generate ideas, compile shopping lists, decide what to wear to work the next day. If it wasn’t for those five-times-a-week runs that happen at ridiculously early hours of the morning, I would probably go completely barmy.

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The adventure that began seven years ago

September 18, 2010 By

When I was a little girl, I didn’t play with dolls. Being a bit of a tomboy, I was much happier getting my knees scraped up and playing with potato guns with my brother and his friends (my poor mother would reach into the bag of potatoes while preparing dinner, only to pull out potatoes that we had used in our potato guns and then put back, full of holes, where we had found them).  I’m pretty sure my mother worried about me.  I had very little interest in typical little girl activities, and by all appearances, I was not dainty and girly, and I had the maternal instincts of a gnat. How would this rough-and-tumble kid grow up to have a functional spousal relationship, not to mention kids?

I didn’t do much to ease the concern of my parents when I was a teenager and later, a young adult.  Socially, I was a late bloomer, and when I did finally start dating, I was going out with entirely unsuitable people. I had my first honest-to-goodness, genuine relationship with a decent human being when I was well into my twenties.  I was with the man in question for two years before life simply took us in opposite directions.  That break-up came about a year after my brother came tumbling out of the closet, so my poor parents despaired of ever having grandchildren at that stage.  To be honest, I kind of gave up hope for myself as well.  I was thirty and alone, and about to move to a place where I knew no-one.

When I was finally expecting my first son at the ripe old age of 33, I started to worry for entirely different reasons.  I was convinced that I was going to be a crap mother.  I had no patience at all.  I had a quick temper.  I’d never really felt comfortable around children, and I wasn’t really sure that I’d know what to do with my own child. I knew a whole lot about being pregnant – what to eat, how to exercise, what all of the little aches and pains meant – but when it came down to it, I knew nothing about actual babies.

Seven years and one day ago, on September 17th 2003, I spent the day cleaning my house to within an inch of its life.  I didn’t know what had come over me: I am not exactly a poster child for domesticity. I was even cleaning windows, for the love of God.  My nine-month-pregnant self was tottering precariously on a chair making sure there were no cobwebs in the corners of the ceiling. That afternoon, I went to the grocery store and stocked up.  When I got home, I cleaned out the fridge and rearranged cupboards.  I think Gerard, the soon-to-be Dad, was a little frightened by my sudden flurry of activity.  I may have been just eleven days away from my due date, but wild horses couldn’t have stopped me.  I was a woman possessed.

Six hours later, when I felt as if I was being turned inside out by contractions, I realized that I had spent the day nesting.  I had read about this nesting phenomenon, but at the time I hadn’t really put two and two together.  It is debatable, of course, whether I was nesting because I was about to go into labour, or whether labour was induced by all of the nesting activity.

A few minutes before 11:00 the following morning, September 18th 2003, the pain was forgotten as a brand-new baby boy was placed gently in my arms. As I looked at my George, into those big eyes that looked so innocent and yet so wise, I was struck by the enormity of this life change. Five minutes previously, I had been just another woman – admittedly one going through an intensely painful experience without any drugs to kill the pain.  Now I was a mother.  I was responsible for an entire human being.  How he turned out, what kind of life he had, would depend to a great extent on my actions.  The weirdest sensation I had was that I was actually ready for it.  I was not afraid (although, to be honest, some pretty intense anxiety would hit two days later, when I was sent home and expected to actually keep this miniature human alive without the aid of nurses telling me what to do).

George the baby

Seven years on, my miniature human being has been transformed into a long, lanky beanpole of a kid whose pants keep getting too short for him. I still experience anxiety, but of a different kind, and I have just accepted that anxiety and worrying are just normal parts of parenthood.  I have faced many challenges, survived another childbirth (also without drugs – do I not learn from these things?).  I have discovered that contrary to what I used to think, I actually do have deep reserves of patience.  I have learned what true unconditional love means, and that those maternal instincts that many people thought were missing when I was a kid were lurking in there somewhere all along.

I have watched my baby grow into a wonderful little boy.  Things are sometimes really difficult for him, there are times when we cannot reach him in his autistic world.  But more and more, we are making connections with him.  We are seeing the spark of intelligence and the emergence of a wonderful quirky sense of humour. He is quick to smile and when he’s with the people he loves, he is generous with his hugs.

On September 18th, 2003, my life changed forever. Not only did I become a mother.  I became George’s mother, and that is something truly special.

Happy seventh birthday to my beautiful boy who has touched the world with his own special brand of magic.

George the boy

Filed Under: Children, parenting Tagged With: , ,
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The wheels on the bus go round and round – or do they?

September 15, 2010 By

My younger son James, who is all of four years old, walks to school because he does not qualify for bussing.  I drop him off at the daycare on my way to work, and one of the daycare staff walks him and a few other kids to the school where they attend Kindergarten, just a couple of blocks away. When they are done with school, they are picked up and walked back to the daycare.  It is an arrangement that works very well.

The fact that James walks to school is a godsend. It means that I only have to deal with the annual frustration of getting the bussing right for one child instead of two.

Ever since George entered the school system three years ago (cripes, has it really been that long?) there has been one issue or another with the bus arrangements.  Don’t get me wrong, I know what a scheduling nightmare it can be.  I am the first to appreciate the chaos that must reign in the bus companies in September of every year. I can imagine how tough it is for the drivers to deal with last-minute route changes and impossibly tight schedules.

But how far is my tolerance supposed to go? Where does one cross the line from being patient and understanding to wanting heads to roll because your child is being shuffled around by the system?

Our bus requirements are a little bit different to those of most families by virtue of the fact that George is picked up from one place before school and dropped off at a different place after school.  Gerard takes him to the therapy centre in the mornings.  A school bus picks him up at lunchtime to take him to school.  Another school bus picks him up from school at the end of the day to bring him home.  The issue is not with the pick-up and drop-off locations, it is a simple matter of timing.

Months ago, before we’d started making bussing arrangements for the new school year, the therapy centre made it clear to us that George’s pick-up time from there had to be no later than 11:45. When the morning kids are dismissed from the therapy centre each day, the afternoon kids come in. The therapy centre does not have the staff to be dealing with both the incoming afternoon kids and the morning kids whose busses haven’t shown up. Like many special ed programs, the therapy centre has a problem with staffing.  They don’t have teachers and therapists wandering the halls with nothing to do.

When I filled in the bus request form, I wrote the requirements on it as clear as day.  In big bold letters, emphasized with yellow highlighter, I wrote that pickup was to be no later than 11:45.  I gave the form the George’s teacher, everyone went away for their summer vacations, and that was the end of it.

Until George’s new bus driver called to tell us he would be picked up each day at 12:05.  Initially we weren’t too bothered by this, and neither was the therapy centre.  September, we thought.  New schedules, the need to transport kids to and from all kinds of places at all kinds of times, logistical nightmare. We notified the bus company that the pick-up time was a problem.  The bus company said it would be fixed within a week.

In the interim, Gerard would have to close down his shop each day to drive to the therapy centre, drop George off at school, and return to work.  Taking an hour out of his day that he really cannot afford right now.  After a few days of this, Gerard called up the bus company to ask them how things were moving along, and he was astonished by the stone wall of resistance that he met.

Not only had the problem not been sorted out, no-one was even trying. No-one wanted to try.  The general message Gerard got, in talking to one person after another, ad nauseum, was that the schedule was what it was and that nothing short of an act of God would change it.  Meanwhile, our son, who has autism and therefore a built-in resistance to changes in routine, is expected to sit idle for anywhere from twenty minutes to half an hour, not knowing what he is expected to do next or who’s coming to get him.

Gerard is nothing is not persistent, so he started phoning his way up the chain within both the bus company and  the school board.  He has been met with a variety of reactions ranging from indifference to arrogance to downright hostility.  At no point has he been anything other than polite and professional, and yet the responses have been baffling.

Through all of Gerard’s discussions and conversations with a number of people (he lost count somewhere after seventeen), a disturbing trend has emerged.  The bus scheduling difficulties had, for the most part, been resolved for the general schoolgoing population by the end of the first week of school.  By stark contrast, the vast majority of special needs kids still don’t have their transportation sorted out.  At the therapy centre that George attends, there are ten children needing transportation between the centre and school.  Of these, two children have correct bussing arrangements in place.  Which means there are eight autistic kids who are still confused about their schedules and anxious because they don’t know what’s coming next or when.  Although I don’t have any statistics, I hear similar stories from other therapy centres.

This whole situation is wrong on so many levels.  For a start, there’s the fact that this should not be a big deal.  We should not be getting this kind of resistance to a simple request that was made correctly in the first place.  But far more importantly, the special needs kids in our society are the ones who experience displacement, anxiety, and confusion. Why are there elements in our society that treat them as an afterthought?

As of this point in time, the problem has still not been resolved.  However, the supervisor (Of the bus company?  The school board?) has admitted that the situation is unacceptable and that it will be sorted out.

On a side note, I am fascinated by the reactions I’ve received from friends and acquaintances I have spoken about this to. One guy told me that all bussing should be done away with because there’s no real need for it.  He started on the age-old story about how, as a kid, he had to walk five miles to school in the snow and five miles back.  Yeah, right.  I’m going to let my son with autism walk to and from school by himself.  Then there was a lady who insisted that this is something I should just “suck up and deal with”, that as a parent it is my responsibility to get George to and from school.  This is not strictly true: it is my parental responsibility to ensure that safe transportation arrangements are made for my child.  As long as those arrangements are in place, the responsibility falls to whoever the arrangements are made with – in this case, the bus company.  It is also my parental responsibility to go to work each day and earn a living so I can feed, clothe, and shelter my children.

Things are not the same now as they were twenty or thirty or fifty years ago.  Back then, parents were fine with their kids walking to school.  There was less high-speed traffic on the roads, there were fewer pedophiles about, and parents could send their kids out of the front door in the mornings with the reasonable expectation that they would see them again at the end of the day.

In the case of younger or special needs children, if there wasn’t a bus available, Mom would be available to walk her offspring to school.  Back then, Moms tended to stay home more and the Dads were the breadwinners.  In most modern-day partnerships, both spouses have to work full-time out of economic necessity.

The argument that “what worked when I was a kid will work now” just doesn’t hold water.

Filed Under: Children, School Tagged With: , ,
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Reflecting on 9/11

September 11, 2010 By

Nine years ago, I was working as a consultant for a small company that developed software applications and websites for businesses.  A lot of my time was spent either at client sites around the Greater Toronto Area or traveling to various locations within North America.  My home base was the office serving the eastern half of North America, located in the west end of Toronto.  My workspace was near the windows facing east towards the city centre.  We had a nice view of the Toronto skyline with its distinctive CN Tower, then the tallest free-standing structure in the world.

I happened to be in the office on September 11, 2001.  I was walking from the kitchen to my desk, armed with a cup of fresh coffee, when one of my coworkers handed me a printout from the CNN website.  It showed a picture of the World Trade Centre’s North Tower, with smoke billowing from the top half.  My immediate reaction was that this must be one of those elaborate Internet hoaxes involving Photoshop.  When I realized that this was actually a legitimate photograph, I thought the same thing everyone else did: that a freakish and tragic accident had occurred.

As I scrutinized the printout, I heard a shout coming from the direction of the conference room: someone had been able to get the temperamental TV to work, and we all spilled into the room just in time to see live footage of the plane hitting the South Tower.  An hour later, we were still sitting in the conference room.  We were incapable of speech; someone muted the sound on the TV because the frantic commentary of chaos was violating the silence that we all needed.  I don’t think anyone moved for about ten minutes.  Eventually, someone at the back of the room whispered, “Oh, my God.”  That utterance was a catalyst for everyone to rush to their phones to call family members, pausing on the way past the window to see if the CN Tower was still there.

There was no question of any work getting done that day.  We all spent the day on the phone, contacting loved ones South of the border to find out who was alive and who wasn’t.  My parents called from South Africa, unashamedly relieved to hear my voice.  Toronto is not that far from New York, especially to people watching the chaos unfold from the other side of the world.  After talking to my parents, I went crazy contacting people on Instant Messenger and by phone.  By late afternoon, there were two people in New York who I had not been able to reach.  I went to bed that night not knowing whether they were alive or dead.  I didn’t sleep.  I suspect that most people didn’t that night.

The husband of one of my missing friends emailed me early the following morning.  As soon as the South Tower had been hit, she and all of her coworkers had been evacuated from their office a block away to some hall somewhere.  Phone signals were jammed: for several hours, my friend’s husband did not know whether or not she had been buried in the rubble of collapsing towers.

I never connected with my other missing friend, Jason, who had an office in the North Tower.  At lunchtime on September 12th, I spoke to a mutual friend, Mark, who had commuted to work with Jason the previous morning.  Jason had dropped his dog off at the vet on his way to work, so he was late.  The two friends had gotten off the subway at the same stop, and then they had gone into a Starbucks for their morning coffee.  With coffee in hand, Jason had gone into the North Tower, waving goodbye to Mark, who had to go a few blocks further.  The time was about 8:35 a.m.  Eleven minutes later, the North Tower was hit.  Jason could have left the building in those ten minutes, I said to Mark.  Not likely, was Mark’s reply.  Jason had said something about a 9:00 meeting for which he had not prepared.  He would have been sipping his coffee and working on reports at his desk, which was right in the flight path of American Airlines Flight 11.  I said to Mark, “I hope Jason got to finish his coffee.” People say the oddest things in times of stress.

Now, nine years later, I reflect on that day along with the rest of the world.  I think of Jason and hope he died instantly, with no pain or stress.  I look at my two children, neither of whom was alive on 9/11, and I pray that the world will be a habitable place for them when they are adults.  I watch coverage of bigotry and extremism on TV and wonder what’s wrong with people.  I look at the world around me and wonder if we have really learned anything.

Something that’s a bit odd is that right at this moment, for the first time since learning of Jason’s fate, I am wondering what became of his dog, the one he dropped off at the vet on that terrible morning.

Filed Under: 9/11 Tagged With: , , , ,
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